Help! Need a prison for a game tonight!

[Lizard Lips]

Ok, so I just found out my players are going to be following up an old hook I had dropped in the campaign weeks ago. They're going to try and rescue a wrongly imprisoned dwarf from the prison at "Ire Mountain" whatever that is (I was just pulling this stuff out of my bum at the time since I didn't think they'd followup on it.)

So, this is supposed to be a nasty prison where folks are thrown in to rot. It needs to be tough to crack, protected from stuff like teleport and flying, but there needs to be a possible "solution"... the party needs to be able to get in and out.

The game's tonight, and I could really use a few other brains working on this. Thanks for any help you can give me.

 

[Darkchylde]

Put plenty of Anti-Magic zones around the area to prevent teleportation and stuff. If they decide to enter the prison by the television means (disguising themselves as staff or whatnot) have plenty of security around the prison, at the entrance, watching the interior hallways, and just before you get into the cells. Usually make only one entrance and exit to and from the holding cells. Have a mind-flayer (with a possible illusion as a normal human) as the "warden". He may be using the prison to feed. Drow work also. You could use orcs as guards with a more powerful version as the head of security. Of course you'll have to have your resident mage and cleric somewhere in the plan also. Gotta have plenty of ghosts too (the unhappy or wrongly imprisoned folk).

Now for the possible solution...it is possible that someone almost escaped. They may have dug a tunnel and sent there plans to a person on the outside to await for their escape. The tunnel would have been well hidden, but before the person could have used it they died of something else. So now the players must discover who has these plans...including a map. And, when they do, they have to get by the outer guards and must find the dwarf once inside.

 

[absurdum]

perhaps the best way to get the dwarf out is to plead his innocense. could make for some good investigation work on behalf of the party. also you don't need to break into and out of prisons, which could land them in there themsleves.

 

[Zerovoid]

Maybe Ire Mountain could be a big stone prison that flys. Its always moving its location, so its very difficult to track down where it actually is at any one time. Also, depending on how you interpret the teleport spell, this removes some of that problem, because if they try to teleport to where they remember it being, they'll just appear in the air and fall

The PC's will have to find a disgruntled ex-employee, to find out how the prison picks its destinations. Either that, or use divination spells. Once they find out where it is, they have to sneak in through a sewage dumping hole at the bottom, and who knows what kind of vile monsters lurk down there.

 

[Delemental]

I remember seeing an adventure once a long time ago, I think it may have been a Dungeon (no idea which one, this was pre-3E, pre-Hasbro) which invoved a complex prison. The prison was inside a large mountain (which seems appropriate, since this was set on "Ire Mountain"). Let me see if I can explain it without being too confusing...

The prison itself was designed as a huge disc, with the individual cells inside the disc. The entire thing was sealed, except for a single opening in the roof exactly the size of the cell. The entire prison was designed to rotate slowly, so that every cell in the wheel would be under the opening for a short period. It was designed to make a complete revolution every 24 hours, so that every prisoner would be under the opening once a day. While they were at the opening, prisoners would get their food for the day, empty their chamber pots, etc. This is also when prisoners could get put into an empty cell, or removed when their sentence was up.

If you're more of a visual person (like me), picture an enormous stone pie (refrain from inserting "Orc and Pie" comments please) , divided into lots of small wedges. The cells are those wedges (or perhaps there were 2-3 cells per slice). The entire pie is covered, so you can't get at it, but someone has cut a hole in the cover exactly the size of one slice. Some device rotates the pie under the cover, so that every slice is exposed at some point.

Actually, thinking about it, I think the original prison didn't have a device turning it. I think the guards just sounded an alarm at regular intervals, and everyone in the prison had to get up and push on the wall to make it move. If everyone didn't push, the wheel would stay put, and you went hungry. Personally, I'd go with some giant dwarven-crafted clockwork mechanism, since the "everybody pushes" method can easily be shut down by a few stubborn and/or insane prisoners.

This setup, though a bit... exotic, offers quite a challenge. Obviously, you'd have to have the "normal" part of the prison too (where the guards and administrators live, kitchens, laundry, etc), but that's an easy dungeon to design. The advantage to this prison is that it places a time-critical element on the rescue (they have to get this dwarf during the window of time when his cell is open, otherwise they wait a day), and it prevents the typical PC tactic of "free everyone in the prison and escape in the confusion". Of course, a facility like this would need substantially fewer guards to control the prisoner population, so combats will probably involve a small number of opponents. You'd have to use methods other than masses of bodies to challenge your PCs - perhaps the prison retains a large number of spellcasters to defend against those teleports you mentioned, or the prison has a lot of hidden passages to allow guards to flank and surround intruders.

 

[AegisEversoaring]

The module that is being referenced is called "Granite Mountain Prison", by Roger Baker. You can find it in Dungeon Issue #36.
I used the module as the backdrop of a section of my campaign, and it is a huge challenge to a party that is not organized.

-Aegis-

 

[CRG]

Ever play shadowrun? Ever get the module Harlequin's Back?

In it, in a later part of the adventure there is a mainden kept in a tower. Around her on the floor is drawn a circle. She's told (browbeaten and convinced) that if she leaves, she will die and (I think) her lover will die as well. Powerful magic stuff.

So she never leaves. The party eventually has to drag her kicking and screaming across the circle. Nothing happens.

I'd make a prison, but the most mounrful of prisoners should be kept by their own minds. Maybe they think THEY NEED TO PROTECT THE WORLD OUTSIDE from the other truly dangerous folk in. Maybe they think they DESERVE to be there. Maybe they think if they leave, something HORRIBLY BAD WILL HAPPEN to them or their family.

Muh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Ha.